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On April 12th, the Otis Student Awards Banquet happened at the Custom Hotel. A good time was had by all and many owls got their just rewards. The folks at Ozine had a blast. Our student club arm,Ozine Media was awarded the Best New Club of the Year! Congratulations to Jose Valdez-Hernandez, the President of Ozine Media, and Elyse Clark, the Vice-President of Ozine Media.

Among the many deserving student winners, we picked out three seniors.

Their work will be featured in the Class of 2016 Annual Exhibition, May 13 - 15. Also known as Senior Show, this event will happen during Commencement Weekend.

Dawn Marshall / Photo by Pyung Kyu Choi

Winner of the Spirited Owl Award, Dawn Marshall, is a Toy Design Major.Her designs will be on show on7th floor of the Ahmanson Building.

In
Dawn's own words, "Seeing the deficit of toys that catered more towards
African-Americans and the Black community, I decide I wanted to come up
with my own brand, a line of dolls that I wish I had when I was
little." And a brand was born...

by Dawn Marshall

For African-American girls who want a black doll that looks just like them!

Introducing
Twisty Tammy, Coily Chloe and Kinky Kim, the most stylish natural fashionistas.
Grab a flower or a butterfly accessory and see the dolls swoop it up
with their magical afros! Raise that Funky Fro and shout from the rooftops BLACK IS
BEAUTIFUL BABY!

Darien Noguchi / Photo by Pyung Kyu Choi and Wei Qiu

The Grand Prize Winner of the ePortfolio Awards was Darien Noguchi, an Architecture/Landscape/Interior Major.

His designs will be on display in the5th floor of the Ahmanson Building.

by Darien Noguchi

Darien is into sustainability and his designs reflect this. This is his design foran art and design college in Downtown Los Angeles. Darien wanted to bring nature to the urban jungle and contrast the adjacent historic stone building with a clean, sustainable design. The green over the facade is supposed to attract the eye and lead the students inside the building. The green eventually culminates at the rooftop park.

This is an Open Air Market designed for a site in Chicago. Goods are placed on "barges" and can be interchanged. The net hanging on top enables people to walk on them and check out the market from another angle.

Sharon Kellerman / Photo by Frank Chiu

2016 Otis Class Valedictorian, Sharon Kellermanis a Product Design Major. She will showher designs in the North Product Design Building.

She was also the Assistant Editor to Ozine for Spring 2014. This semester she wrote a post for her blog, Sharon Kellerman (click here to go there) and we're happy to publish it in its entirety.

VIDEOS – Learning a New Language of Communication

One of the most exciting things to me about design has been its outstanding, universal way of communication. Good design can reach people on a level that goes past languages and cultures. All my life, I naturally found myself in the role of a mediator or a translator – be it explaining cultural differences, personal misunderstandings between my two sisters, actual languages or simply complex ideas. It seems my career path of a product designer isn’t that far off! In Design for the Real World, a book that has been very inspiring to me, visionary Victor Papanek suggests that designers have to act as a "communication bridge," a translator among team members with various professional backgrounds. Product designers don't learn everything there is to know about design, manufacturing, business and advertising, but they must know just enough to bring the necessary parts together and make sure they use ways of communication that are appropriate, effective and easily understandable for different audiences.

Now, if anyone had told me three years ago that I would be doing as much graphic design as my projects have been requiring lately, I would have laughed at them. I never thought I was any good at it and in the beginning, decisions made about layout and fonts seemed completely random. During my time at Otis, I quickly learned the importance of graphics and how much they are needed to communicate an idea that makes perfect sense in my mind but may be much harder to understand when simply written or spoken. Now that graphic design is a language I am fluent in, I have been exploring how moving images can be a great tool to quickly tell a story in an appealing and engaging way. I know I am just scratching the surface of Aftereffects, but I am already very excited about the new world of communication I am tapping into!

People are getting more impatient with each Instagram post they look at or every tweet they read. Sometimes we have only seconds as designers to convince them and excite them about our design. Here is a little teaser of a video for my Cup of Desert, a ceramic cup inspired by the flora of the Southern California Desert! Instagram format and length, of course.